Building A Company From The Ground Up Today, What Would It Look Like?

Organizations over the past twenty, fifty, and one hundred years were very heavily modeled after the military. There were a few people at the top who made decisions and had access to all the information, there was a central headquarters everyone had to come in to on a set schedule, and everyone was just expected to "shut up and do their jobs." It's no wonder that when you look up synonyms for "work" you come across words such as: drudgery, toil, or daily-grind. The same goes for "employee" which brings up synonyms such as: servant, slave, and cog. Finally we have "manager" which brings up synonyms such as: slavedriver, boss, and zookeeper (it's also interesting to point out that the antonym for "manager" is "employee"). This is how our organizations have been constructed from the ground up, with these "ideas" ingrained in them; that an employee is a cog, that work is drudgery, and that managers are slave-drivers. It's should come as no surprise that most American workers (70%) are essentially zombies who are disengaged from work.

Now things are changing. The behaviors and technologies that are we seeing in our personal lives are entering our organizations and this is causing a big shift in the future of work. Employees now have a voice, information is being shared, we can "connect to work," hierarchies are being flattened, and the notion of leading by fear is dead. Many organizations today are now having to go against the traditional grain to shatter traditional conceptions of what it means to "work." So, what would it look like if we had to build a new global organization from the ground up today?

Would we need company owned offices and a central headquarters?

Many organizations today are heavily invested in flexible and mobile work environments which allow employees to work from anywhere, anytime, and on any device. Thus, eliminating the need to have many company owned offices. In fact, several companies have large goals of making 30-50% of their entire employee base work either full-time or part-time from home over the next few years. TELUS, is one of these companies and they are looking at saving millions of dollars every year on retail space costs and thousands of hours every year on commuting time. Many companies also exist which allow employees to rent out work spaces, conference rooms, or desks as needed at an ad-hoc basis. Meaning you can work from anywhere but as soon as you need to get together with your co-workers you can easily have an office space accessible should you need it. Work is no longer a place you need to go, instead the theme of the future is "connect to work" not "go to work."

Would we be using email to communicate?

Email used to be the best (and only) way to effectively communicate and collaborate with employees and customers. But today that is far from true. Many of the social and collaborative platforms we use today inside and outside of our companies are starting to become preferred modes of working. Internal collaboration platforms allow employees to reduce their reliance on email to virtually nil, not only that but the functionality, benefits, and outcomes of using these technologies is far greater then anything email could ever provide. We can keep our teams aligned, find the people and information we need (ourselves!), and communicate and collaborate in a way that best fits our needs. So, if you were starting a large enterprise from scratch today, would email be the core of how you would communicate and collaborate?

Who would have access to information?

The traditional model for most organizations always saw the managers at the top of the pyramid have access to the information. This is how the military operates, commanders delegated the soldiers do what they are told. They made the decisions and controlled what everyone else saw or didn't see. Today the smart organizations are allowing employees to share and discover information instead of limiting access. In fact, the social and collaborative technologies that many companies are using today are designed to allow information to be shared and not to be limited or restricted. The manager of the future believes and relies on collective intelligence and that can't happen when information is restricted. It's no longer about the few people at the top having information it's about the few people at the top making sure all the right people have the information.

What would the corporate structure look like?

Again, the traditional model for most companies resembles a pyramid or a tree. The senior managers sit at the top and everyone else cascades down from them. Rarely do we see communication flow from the bottom to the top. Instead senior level officers interact with other senior level officers and the same is true for all other roles. Hierarchies in many companies are so strict that I have heard of several instances where managers were upset that an entry level employee would dare speak to them without going up the "food chain." Today, the smart companies are flattening their hierarchies by allowing anyone to communicate and collaborate with anyone, regardless of seniority. The social and collaborative tools out there that many companies are now adopting are really making this possible.

It appears that if we were to build a large organization from scratch today that it would look quite different from the traditional company. Employees would have flexible work arrangements and wouldn't need to come into an office from 9-5 each day. Email would not be the main mode of communication and collaboration. Information would be shared and unlocked for employees to access and discover. And the corporate structure would be flattened out and be less hierarchical. I'm sure you can think of plenty of other changes as well. Many companies are still not thinking about this but the good news is that some organizations are already re-inventing and evolving themselves. However, the challenge for many of these organizations is that they have to go against many years of "traditional" thinking. It's a long journey that needs to start somewhere.

So if you were to build a company from the ground up today, what would it look like?

Jacob Morgan is a keynote speaker, author (most recently of The Future of Work), and futurist. You can get the first 30 pages of his book for free as well as weekly content on the future of work by subscribing to his newsletter.

Jacob is an Author, speaker and futurist. His latest book, The Future of Work: Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization, explores how the workplace is changing and was endorsed by business leaders such as the Chairman of KPMG, CEO of W...